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He began working after last year's championships on this routine, and enjoys the idea of doing things with rings that they were not intended to achieve. His loud and angry persona was an intentional attempt to express a side of himself he would never perform outside of the IJA family.

Sorenson began juggling at age 15, and immediately bought the Guinness record book to see what it would take to achieve a world record. "The Guinness book is driving me," he said. "I'd like to see the records be higher, and if possible I'll put them there."

He proceeded to "practice like a maniac" and at 17 he could run seven balls and five clubs. He got his Guinness record for an eight club flash in April 1995 - just five days after his 10th juggling anniversary. He isn't through yet, either. He can run nine rings and flash 11, and has enjoyed bantering with Albert Lucas about challenging him for some of the current ring records. Sorenson is 26, married, lives in Cincinnati and works as a performer and Christian-themed motivational speaker at churches.

Dr. Stardust (Gil Pontius) was forced to develop his unique style of juggling four and five balls overhead because painful tendonitis in his wrists eventually forced him to quit the usual palms-up juggling motion. He found that pushing objects overhead didn't cause pain, and it has become his standard pattern ever since.

Pontius holds a day job as a resarch associate at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Boston, researching the interaction between humans and environment at the global scale.

His Dr. Stardust act recalls his early fascination with astronomy, which he studied in college. His prop stand represented a solar system, with a volleyball in the middle as the sun and five smaller balls suspended around it as planets. He came on stage in a lab coat to discover the props and look at them through a telescope. He then manipulated the telescope and large ball. He then ripped off his lab coat twice - for a costume change to juggle four and five balls above his head with many neck catches, face catches and mouth catches.

A music change signaled a shift in the routine for his final work with "orbitals," soccer balls tethered to rope that he swung in patterns around his body and kicked with his feet. He concluded by combining the swinging with bouncing the volleyball on his head. He developed the routine just for the IJA championships, and now would like to develop a whole one-person show around Dr. Stardust.